


The Ungodly Bullshit of Happy Ever After

by ijemanja



Category: Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-15
Updated: 2008-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:32:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1844503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/pseuds/ijemanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Call has angst about her place in the universe. Ripley is not a therapist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ungodly Bullshit of Happy Ever After

**Author's Note:**

> Follows straight on from the end of Alien Resurrection, drawing a little from the alternate ending to the extended version of the film - just for the setting on Earth. Written for weirfan, for femslash08.

Vriess is in the cargo bay, alternately trying to knock himself together a new chair out of spare ship parts, and grumbling over the busted-out window they'll have to patch before the Betty can fly again.

"Either way I can't go anywhere," he says. "Anyone would think I'm a damn cripple!"

Call leaves him to it, with a smile and a wave over her shoulder. "Gimme a yell if you need any help." Just don't expect me to come running, she adds silently. She needs some fucking sleep, they all do.

But then, none of them are exactly in a hurry to settle down and close their eyes, either.

Out through the cargo bay doors, down the ramp, and she's back outside. Since being brought online, she's spent nearly her whole life on stations and ships, and she finds she likes it, the feel of real air on her face.

"Nothing on sensors," she says, when she finds Ripley. "The guys are doing okay. Well, Vriess is. I didn't bother checking on Johner."

She didn't have to. She's pretty sure she knows where he is, and she's pretty sure it's in crew quarters, going through their former shipmates' stuff.

They're dead, and they probably wouldn't have cared, anyway, but it's still a shitty thing to do. She just doesn't want to argue about it now, though. Maybe later.

Ripley hasn't said anything, standing there looking past the ruins of old Earth civilisation to the horizon. The sun has just gone down, the sky turning purple.

They'll go exploring tomorrow, she thinks.

After a moment, she starts talking again to fill the silence. "He cleaned up the bodies off the bridge, anyway. Well, he moved them somewhere. There's still blood and shit congealing everywhere, up there and in the bay, too. Nice, huh?"

"Well don't look at me, I'm not a fucking maid," Ripley says. "And neither are you. I say we make Johner finish what he started."

Call likes that plan. And she likes how Ripley says 'we' like it won't just be Ripley making him back down like a dog with its tail between its legs.

"Come on," Ripley says, turning back towards the ship.

"Wait."

"Call?"

She hesitates, shifting back and forth on her feet. "I don't want to go back in there." She really kind of doesn't. Not with the brain bits and chunks of skull underfoot, baby alien guts and Johner picking over his friends' belongings like it's not totally morbid and fucked up. She can face all of that, will later, just not yet. "I want to stay out here," she says, weighs how pathetic and needy she already sounds and doesn't add 'with you'.

"Okay," Ripley says, with a question in it.

Call rubs her hands over her face. She was so wired right after they touched down and it was all over, but the edge has dropped away and in its place is this heavy feeling, pulling her down.

She didn't sleep in the hours before the Betty docked with the base ship, way too nervous. And she certainly didn't sleep once she was aboard, too busy committing terrorist acts and running for her life. And no, synthetics don't need sleep the way humans do, but they get tired, they get worn out, worn down.

She puts a hand over the hole in her chest, where it still hurts. It comes away damp.

"We should do something about that."

"There's nothing to be done." She turns away. It's embarrassing, having your insides on display, literally. "I'm fine."

"Yes, you're fine. You're just leaking white goo all over the place."

"It'll heal over." She winces again, shifting in place. It hurts more when she's thinking about it. "It's just, I think the bullet's still in there."

"And when were you going to mention that, when you started rattling when you walk?" Ripley takes her shoulder and pulls her around.

"It's not like I'm going to die."

"Good." Ripley looks like she wants to laugh. At her. Call's glad her freakish existence is so amusing. "Let me get some tools off Vriess and we'll take care of it."

"No, you don't need -" She rolls her eyes. "Look, I'd do it myself but it's too - you just need to reach in and take it out."

Ripley smiles. "I can do that."

Lips pressed together, resolute now if only because Ripley is, her hands move to her jacket, and she takes it off. They should probably go back inside, where there's better light, at least. But she just looks away and lifts her shirt off over her head. Then she spreads her clothes on the ground and lies down where she is, an arm over her breasts, the other gingerly touching the edges of the gaping wound.

Ripley watches her a moment, and then lowers herself to her knees beside her. "Well this is going to hurt. I have big hands, and that's a pretty small hole."

She bites her lip and tries not to laugh. There's no way Ripley meant that to sound as dirty as it did. Only then she glances up at Ripley and from the look on her face, yeah, she totally did.

It's a little weird for a moment, and then it's just painful, because Ripley plants one hand just below Call's ribs to keep her steady, then eases her fingers inside her chest cavity and starts rooting around for something that shouldn't be there.

She sucks in a breath, hands making useless fists in the dirt. "Fuck," she grits out between clenched teeth.

"Am I getting warm?"

She tries to focus on what's going on inside her, instead of how much it hurts. "Fuck," she says again. "There. No, back to the right. My right. Yeah, that - that's it. I think. Jesus Christ." She gulps down air and thinks about puking as Ripley holds up her hand, dripping white.

"You want to keep it?" she says.

"Another souvenir?" She lets out a strangled laugh. "Sure, why not? I wish I'd kept the other one."

She takes the twisted metal slug, slippery with her own biofluids, and tucks it in a pocket of her pants.

"All better?"

"I just hated knowing it was in there. It didn't hit anything vital." The pain has eased back to a raw, grinding ache now. She lets her head loll to one side as she relaxes into the uneven ground, her eyes tracking Ripley as she sits back on her heels.

She realises Ripley's hand is still there, resting warm and dry on Call's abdomen. Before she can think about it too much, before she can chicken out, she takes Ripley's hand and moves it to cover her breast.

It's only a moment before she regrets it, with Ripley sitting there looking down at her like a science project gone awry.

She releases Ripley's hand.

"No, I'm sorry, of course you don't want to," she starts to babble. "Why would you? I'm - I'm just - ugh."

"Oh, not this again."

"You just had your hand inside my fucking chest!"

"Yeah, it was really hot, wasn't it?"

"Shut up, it's not funny." She turns her head away, biting her lip and trying not to cry. They'd just be fake tears, anyway.

Ripley, though, still hasn't moved. "You know for an almost indestructible robot, you're pretty high maintenance."

She sniffles. She's pathetic and disgusting and it's still not funny. "This is what you get when you're a machine designed by machines designed by humans - a massive inferiority complex."

"Well I'm not a therapist, so get over it. Besides," she adds, and her hand shifts a little, stroking Call's skin ever so lightly, "you're not so bad."

Simulated desire, simulated responses, it doesn't mean she feels it any less when Ripley's touch drifts up to her face, fingers tracing her cheeks, her mouth.

"You say 'grown in a lab' like it's a bad thing," Ripley says, and leans down, her face hovering, barely touching cheek to cheek. She shifts and her nose brushes past Call's. Her teeth are ever so slightly bared.

Call realises she's holding her breath. She lets it out slow and then pushes up on her elbows, angles for Ripley's mouth and catches it with her own. God, finally, she thinks, as she sinks back down and Ripley comes with her.

And okay, this is like some sort of dream, kissing Ripley. She was going to kill this woman, this alien thing, and now they're making out? Of course, there was a lot of running and dying and terror between then and now. So maybe it's only to be expected, feeling so drawn to Ripley, feeling like she couldn't live without her, this woman she's only known a day.

Not weird at all. Or, well, it's definitely not pathetic or disgusting, so she's already ahead.

Ripley touches her face then, and her other hand takes one of Call's and presses it down between her thighs. She stares into Call's eyes, very serious, and says, "Be gentle. I'm a virgin, you know."

"Oh fuck off." Laughing, she tries to roll away, but Ripley holds onto her and she can't move.

Grinning, Ripley traces her face with her eyes. "You don't really mean that."

"No," she answers simply, and reaches a hand around Ripley's neck, cranes her head up to kiss her again.

Later, when she falls asleep, she dreams of aliens. It's not so bad.

And when she wakes up in the pre-dawn light, shivering and damp with dew, she turns into Ripley's body, and Ripley curls her arms around her, holding her close.

She presses her face into Call's hair, and says, "It's okay, Call."

She nods mutely, cold nose and chin brushing the skin of Ripley's chest. Because it is. It really fucking is.


End file.
